Pamela Harris

In December I like to think about what I want to bring into the new year and what I want to leave behind. This year I found myself thinking about risk.

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with risk. As a kid I took all kinds of bad risk, including using drugs and getting myself into awful situations with no plan for getting out. I went to art school versus studying something practical (I highly recommend doing this), and I move to NYC with $174 dollars in my pocket. When I came here I had no practical skills and barely knew anyone. While apartment hunting I got chased by a machete-wielding crack head when I fearlessly went into a rough neighborhood. All of it I took as part of being independent.

For the last twenty plus years I’ve mostly depended on art and writing to make my living. Financial vulnerability is a reality for me, and though I now accept it, it doesn’t mean I like it. Once in a great while I’ll still have a moment of panic, but mostly I get on with it. It’s taken me almost twenty years of living this way to get used to it.

The risk I’m looking at now isn’t external. I’m looking at the kind of risk I haven’t taken, risk that pushes me past what’s comfortable and into a place that scares the shit out of me. For instance, I really want to direct and produce a short film and just thinking about it, I quake. Why, I don’t know. Especially since I feel very confident and ready when it comes to directing a feature.

Whatever it is, it’s a symptom of something bigger that’s starting to play out in me. For a long while I’ve proceeded with caution when it came to certain parts of my personality. There’s been a quiet soundtrack telling me to not get too full of myself, and nobody needs to see my rough edges, and don’t be too unpleasant, and don’t do anything that seems needy, and keep my fury in check. Really, try not to offend people.

It’s all a lot of fear. Over the last decade I’ve been taking baby steps toward trying to move past these thoughts and the steps have added up to change. Now, I’m discovering a new layer in that soundtrack. Something is shifting and I’m putting more of me into the world than I ever have before. The fear is only now starting to lessen.

This political climate helps. A good friend, Cynthia, chartered a bus to DC and a bunch of us went to march. What stood out was the feeling of community, a sense of purpose that united a gigantic sea of humanity. It was hopeful, and hope was something I’d been struggling with.

Since the inauguration and the tsunami of tsoris that’s come with it, I keep seeing glimpses of hope in the global protests that have erupted and in the pushback. The size of the protest no longer matters. I keep remembering Rosa Parks was one woman who sat on a bus and didn’t budge.

The point of all this is, the number one thing I need to take into the new year is hope. With it, no matter what I see or how scared or grief-filled I might get, hope gives me purpose. Hope lets me take action.

I don’t write shorts and on the whole they don’t interest me, but directing something does. I want to try to write one, or write a web series, or find something to direct. The last few months I've been filming a lot of art and construction and maybe a story will arise from this.

Our sweet and spicy Ginger is still up in the middle of the night, and Joe is still up and out with her. Moving is on hold right now, so I’m looking to find a way to bring more sleep into this year. It may mean looking for ways out of the city now and then. Maybe we’ll rent a weekend place.

I’m keeping all my friends and the people I know because I feel very lucky and grateful for the people in my life. I want to bring risk in with me. These posts, starting with this one, I no longer want to edit and edit and edit some more. That’s a step toward taking risk.

It's time to leave as much fear as I can behind. Leave behind doubt. Franz Kline said, "The real thing about creating is to have the capacity to be embarrassed."

Every time I get a comment or email about this blog, a surge of gratitude goes through me. Every single one of you who reads this blog, you’re coming with me for sure. Maybe we can all be embarrassed together.

Comments

It's all about letting go of fear, and taking a risk, and just DOING IT. It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it just matters that you TRY. And if you fail once, or twice, or ten times, or a hundred times, all that counts is that you pick yourself up, and TRY again.... smiling.
Let's do a film about a Pot Run in the 80's.
"It came barreling across the Straits like a rabid wolf running thru a moonlit wood, from the Bahama Slopes, past the Cay Sal Bank, taking dead aim on an offshore jetty lying in the Channel by Islamorada, the engine whining and screeching thru the darkness like a sharp horizontal arrow piercing the waves, leaving a cascade of spray behind the boat like a transparent water curtain flapping in the wind, slashing his awareness to the core, and transporting his attention to the offload at hand, as he stood on the bow of the lookout craft ready to bolt in a split second, ready to hide in the darkness of the night."
Now we follow up with someone getting a marijuana prescription filled in downtown Miami. Good luck Pamela. If anyone can do it,
YOU CAN !!!

Paul Murphy |
February 2, 2017 at 10:31 pm

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